


Mito Freecs Goes On An Adventure

by Jacks8n



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, Mito POV, Mito-centric, She goes on an adventure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-27 17:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12085398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacks8n/pseuds/Jacks8n
Summary: In the wake of Abe's passing, Mito Freecs decides to leave Whale Island.





	1. I'm doing GREAT, thank you very much

Mito sat on the cliff, her legs dangling out over the sea far below. Rain had poured just an hour earlier; dew still clung to the grass. Mist rose from the water in gasps. The sky was full from edge to edge with drooping clouds, sitting scattered and wispy, cutting out swaths of warm shadows across the blinding waves. Spun by a weak spring breeze, it all swayed like a painting in motion.

Abe was dead. It was a spring day like any other, but Abe was dead.

Mito sighed, closing her eyes and burying her face in the too-long sleeves of her jacket. The damp had soaked into her joints, making her hands creaky and cold. 

There were arrangements to be made and a service to attend, but right now, Mito wanted nothing more than to just sit for a few minutes longer, alone beside the sea.

***

“Thank you for having me over,” said Mito. She swiped her boots on the welcome mat before lining them up beside the front door.

“Of course, of course. Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, please.”

Mito sat at the kitchen table, a mug in her hands, as her mother’s childhood friend patted her arm. She couldn’t find a comfortable way to rest her feet on the chair.

“Anything we can do, sweetheart. We’re here,” said Elsidee. Her gray hair was mostly corralled into a bun at the back of her head, but some of it had fallen out to frame her face.

“Thank you,” said Mito. There was too much sugar in her coffee.

“And if you want to stay here, the guest room is free, too.”

“Thank you.”

Outside in the garden, Elsidee picked tomatoes for supper while Mito swung on a bench hanging from the porch.

“I’m glad to hear she wasn’t in pain,” said Elsidee.

Mito nodded, curling in her lips. “Yeah. Just gone in the morning. Doctor said it was probably a stroke.”

Elsidee straightened, resting the half-full basket on her hip. “Well. When I go, I wouldn’t mind going like that. Especially if I’d spent years with such a wonderful granddaughter.”

Mito smiled weakly. “Yeah?”

Elsidee nodded, her eyes determined and convincing. “I think I’d be content with that.”

***

Mito, Elsidee, and a few more of Abe’s close friends washed her body. They dressed her in a white robe, one that draped elegantly over her still form. Mito gave her grandmother a kiss on her forehead before they wrapped her in cloth.

Abe had lived a long life, and had been, at one time or another, a close friend to everyone on the island. As her body was gently rested in the earth, Mito supporting her neck on the way down, the docks were silent and the city streets were empty. The cemetery itself was hushed, but for the inescapable shuffling of human bodies.

No tears were shed as she was buried; first, by fistfuls of flowers, and then by dirt. Abe had lived a long and fulfilling life. It was a somber event, but it was also a celebration.

Mito woke up the next day well into the afternoon with a splitting headache, puffy eyes, and an uniced cake on the kitchen table that tasted far too salty.

***

Ging’s voice was tinny through the phone.

“What do you want?” she demanded, standing with a hand on her hip.

“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he said, his voice infuriatingly sincere.

Mito scoffed. “Since when do you care.”

She slammed the phone back down onto the receiver.

***

“Do you want me to fix this?” asked Killua, swinging the door that never quite closed back and forth. It clunked rhythmically.

“Do you know how?” asked Mito.

Killua shrugged.

They drank tea beside each other on the couch, Killua’s knees pulled up to his chest. The room was dead silent—if someone were to walk into the house, there would be no indication anyone was home. The clock in the kitchen ticked excruciatingly slowly. 

“Aren’t you and Gon not talking?”

“We’re talking, I’m just mad at him.”

“Insisting on leaving a day before he gets here doesn’t sound like talking.”

Killua glanced away, eyes glued to the floor. He dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t know. Well. _You_ know. It can be hard to love him sometimes.”

Mito did know.

She woke up late again the next morning to a clean house, breakfast cold but made, and a note on the table in boxy print.

**Come visit me and Alluka some time.**

The door to the office, the one that had been open for as long as Mito could remember, closed smoothly when she tested it.

***

Mito stood back as Gon knelt by the grave for almost an hour. Eventually, she walked over and dropped a hand on his shoulder.

“Rain’s coming. Let’s go home.”

Every light was off in the house except for the one in the kitchen. Hail crashed against the window. The fridge hummed in protest as Gon stood in front of it, his mouth set in a hard line.

“Not much in here.”

“We can have rice. I’ll shop tomorrow.”

Mito pretended not to notice the look Gon shot her.

***

“Don’t make her pay!” shouted Elsidee from the storage room.

“I wasn’t going to!” Her daughter, Alorna.

“I’m paying,” said Mito, trying once again to drop change on the counter. Alorna pushed it back.

“It’s on the house,” said Alorna.

“You’re being too kind,” said Mito. There was an inpatient bite to her voice.

“Take it!” said Cassi, organizing the fly display.

Gon scooped up the cash and swiftly lifted the wallet from Mito’s hands.

“Thank you,” he said, grabbing one of the bags before walking out of the store. Mito’s vision swirled black at the edges.

In a huff, she picked up the bags from the counter and followed him outside.

“Why would you do that?” she hissed.

“They wanted to help,” said Gon. “Turning them down would have just made them feel bad.”

Mito groaned in frustration.

That night, there was chicken and vegetables mixed with the day old leftover rice.

Gon hummed as he cleaned dishes, and Mito, having cooled off from earlier, was happy to lean back on one of the kitchen stools. The radio bubbled a grainy beat, and the world outside was dark.

Gon suddenly slowed, then stopped, the heels of his palms resting on the edge of the counter. Mito frowned, watching him carefully. His face was turned away.

“Has Ging—did he? At all?”

Mito sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Yeah. He called.”

“Oh,” said Gon.

It was a few more minutes of silent dishwashing before he spoke again.

“What did he say?”

“He asked how I was, and then I hung up.”

“Oh.”

***

“Mito—”

“No! You do not get to just show up out of nowhere!”

“Mito, please—”

“Please what, Ging? What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be happy!”

“Happy!? I have _no one_ because of you! I gave up school to deal with the consequences of your life. You stole my youth, and you took advantage of how much I love Gon to do it and I will _never_ forgive you for that. I could have had my own fucking life Ging. I _wanted_ my own life. You weren’t the only one who— who— And now you have the fucking nerve, the _nerve_ , to want me to be _happy_ about all that!?”

“That’s not what I meant, Mito…”

“Get out of my house.”

“Mito—”

“Get out. Of my house.”

***

Mito sat on the cliff and looked down at the ocean. A single sail boat rocked on the waves. She could just make out the figures on board, their hands on the railing, shoulders close enough to touch. One kissed the other on the cheek.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Gon folded down, trying to peek at her eyes, hidden by hair.

“Please don’t think I’m mad at you,” said Mito.

“I don’t.”

“Okay. Good.”

The tide was low, leaving nothing behind but a gravel beach and scrappy seaweed.

“Hey Mito?”

She looked up at him, locking gaze with his sparkling eyes. Gon bit his lip before speaking.

“Why stay now?”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re leaving?” said Cassi.

Mito shook her head. “Just thinking of it. Freecs tradition,” she said.

“Maybe you could make coming _back_ part of the tradition,” grumbled Cassi, stretching to reach the plates on the top shelf of the cupboard.

A lifetime of pictures hung on the walls of Elsidee’s dining room. Mito was in more than a few. So we're the rest of the Freecs, from her parents to Gon. They were ordered so that as you walked around the dining room table, everyone aged. It was an odd experience to have your family’s history flash by in the time it took to set down lemonade. The most recent addition to the wall was a picture taken at Abe’s funeral two months prior.

Cassi, dressed in a gown Mito could most generously describe as garish, cut into the cake. “So where would you go first? Do you want to do the whole hunting license thing?”

Mito snorted a laugh. “No, that's not for me. I don't see the appeal. More interested in just… seeing new faces.” She rushed to clear her throat. “Not that any of you have bad faces.”

“Almost as charming as Ging,” said Alorna, rolling her eyes and hiding a smirk.

Mito’s face puckered.

“Ugh, sorry. Fuck that guy,” said Alorna.

“To fucking Ging!” said Cassi, raising a glass.

Alorna smacked her arm.

Cassie’s birthday, after a few rounds of a card game Elsidee always won, migrated to the bar for the weekly social dance. Chairs and tables had been pushed to the side, leaving a big, low-ceilinged hall.

Mito sat in the corner, sipping at a pint of something with the flavour to match its cheap price. One of the retired sailors, Red, an old man with downturned eyes, joined her.

He tapped his wedding ring against the table. “Decision?” he asked. Mito smiled sadly.

“It would be lonely without all of you.”

Red puckered his lips. “No, no, you'd meet people. It would be good for you.”

There were whoops from the dance floor as one of the temporary deckhands passing through dipped Cassi low enough her braid brushed the floor.

The quiet sense of grief went unsaid. At nineteen now, Cassi was the island’s youngest permanent inhabitant. The grim future of the little port, only tangentially involved with the rest of the world for generations, was nearing. Most of the dancers wouldn't live to see its end, but knowing it was coming was heartbreaking all the same.

Mito’s possible departure—even if she was only thinking of it as a temporary escape from the too big too empty house—would be just another of the many signs.

Mito watched as Red closed his eyes and swayed with the music. He was as familiar to her as the cut of the mountains against the sky from her bedroom window.

He’d first arrived when he was young and working winters on his uncle’s crabbing rig. That was sixty years ago, now. Mito’s brow folded together as she watched him, perfectly warm and content in the same bar where he'd met his wife, long before even Johanne’s _first_ marriage.

“Why Whale Island,” she asked, just loud enough to be heard over the waltz.

Red glanced at her quickly before his eyes lost focus. He leaned in and spoke low enough that no one would overhear them. “This whole island's like a big family.” Red shrugged. “All just fell together. It was what I was looking for.” He flapped his hands loosely. “Doesn't mean it'll be that for everyone, though.”

Mito nodded slowly. Her cheeks were warm from the alcohol. “I wish it could be,” she admitted.

Red shrugged, his chin folding on his shoulder. “Wouldn't be what it is if it was.” He leaned over and patted Mito’s cheek. “So sad. Come. Let's cheer you up.”

Red was as good at dancing as one could reasonably expect a 78 year old with a limp and cataracts to be. He only headbutted Mito in the nose once, which was actually tangible improvement from the usual.

“I love this one,” said Red as the record rolled onto the next waltz. “It’s my favourite.”

“You said that for the last one.”

“Don’t recall that.”

Satisfied by Mito laughing genuinely, he moved on to his next victim. Cassi moaned with her head buried on the table as he shared stories with the deckhand. Alorna pitched in, adding details about how _exactly_ Cassi had managed to drive a fully functioning automobile into a tree without touching the gas pedal once. Mito eventually took pity on her and shooed off Cassi’s loving, but occasionally overbearing, family.

Elsidee hugged her tight before she left. “Get home safe,” she said.

“I will,” said Mito.

The walk up to the house was still. The first cicadas of summer chirped in the long grass to either side of the dusty path. Overhead, the new moon sky was dunked in stars.

Mito stopped, tilting her head back before closing her eyes. She took a deep breath in.The trees shushed as they swayed. The ocean crashed. The grass shimmered, and something off in the forest snapped. It was a soundscape that dredged up memories of her youth, of running blindly through thickets, Ging on her heels. Of jumping off the cliff and diving into the water far below. Of stacking rocks beside the stream and catching minnows with her hands. All at once Mito longed for a summer that had passed decades ago. She breathed out.

Mito went home. She kicked off her boots as she clicked on the lights. It was just as she had left it—messy. Books and papers lay on the ground in piles, boxes of Abe’s things rested unsorted, and the spider she hadn't had the motivation to kick out still haunted in the corner of the dining room ceiling.

Mito dropped her jacket on one of the stools in the kitchen and turned on the distorted radio. She worked around the dirty dishes, preparing herself a late supper of eggs and toast. Mito cleaned off a fork to use, out of any in the drawer. It was only once she was eating, perched on the empty scrap of space on the dining room table, that she noticed the phone was flashing. She played the message as she chewed tasteless eggs.

“Killua here! And Gon, but he… ran. So he’s… sleeping.”

Killua dragged out the last word. Mito narrowed her eyes.

“It's all good though, he's fine. And he says… hi. Anyways, can you let me know if slash when you're flying in? Alluka just got her driver's licence and she wants to pick you up. If you're coming. And it's okay if you're not! Just curious. Flight number would be good. Oh, and if you book ahead, you can pick out a window seat. Okay. Uhh. Oh, right. Do you have any allergies or stuff? I'm going out shopping tomorrow so just. Let me know. Okay. I think that's it. Bye Mito, hope you have a nice day. And Milluki, I hope baby crows peck out your eyes and then feed them to you and then make you barf them up so you have to eat them again and then make you barf them up _again_ then—”

The machine cut him off. 

Mito packed her bag.


	3. ging die bitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i am.. so sorry i had this chapter waiting for a polish edit for. 8 months (hehe left the date this was first saved as a draft RIP)

Mito leaned over the railing. Waves crashed against the hull of the boat. The sky was full of a blue so big she felt as though she could fall up into it if she didn’t hold on tight. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, or a scrap of land. Just blue and blue, and the hazy white line where they met.

“How long does it take to get to the mainland?” she asked. An awkward, frail man with deep red hair jumped at her voice. She'd seen him around the island, but he almost never spoke to anyone. Too caught up in his own daydreams.

“Um, depends…” he said. “Sometimes the currents are strong, or there’s a storm, or this one time there was a pod of dolphins so we just… oh, jeez. Usually, four hours.”

“Thanks.”

Going below deck made Mito feel claustrophobic, so she stuck to where she could see the sky, but that made her feel exposed. There was no winning, it seemed.

“That's pretty good,” said the awkward crewman as he passed her, gesturing at her sketchbook.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You draw a lot? Like, it's _really_ good.”

Mito shrugged. “Not really.”

“Nonsense, it's awesome!”

She let the miscommunication slide.

Mito had lost touch with her old hobby a few years after she'd won guardianship of Gon. As he got older and more difficult to manage, and as Abe had shifted from supporting her to needing support herself, there just hadn't been time for it. After he had left to take the hunter exam, she'd picked it back up—that afternoon, actually. It had been something to keep her hands busy when all she could think of were the worst case scenarios. 

Painting, she did less of. It was expensive and slow. Despite that, a few landscapes hung in hallways around the island. One of the port at dawn sat unfinished in a corner of the house. She'd been planning for it to be Abe’s birthday present.

Mito sketched the mast from different angles. She leaned over the side and to look at the shape of the water as the bow pushed through it. She lay down on her back underneath the sails, and climbed up to the crow’s nest. By the time she was done, there were two dozen pages of references for later.

For lunch, Mito ate cheese and bread on the stern. She reluctantly gave some up to the boat’s resident mouser, a fluffy tabby with claws that sank into the wood for balance.

The crewman found her.

“Hey! I just realize why I recognize you,” he said, climbing up the ladder to her perch. “Freecs?”

“You caught me.”

The man nodded his head enthusiastically. “Your kid saved my life!”

Mito tilted her head. “That was you?”

“Yeah! You going to see him?”

Mito nodded. “That's the idea.”

“Is hide and seek just what you guys do?”

She laughed and tried, for his sake, to not make it too bitter. “No, his father's just an asshole.”

The deckhands mouth fell open, then he nodded vigorously in understanding. “That makes sense.”

Mito watched him blankly. He swallowed hard.

“Anyway, nice to meet you. I see where he gets his… intensity from. Say hi to him for me!”

“Will do.”

It was another hour before the mainland came into view. At first, it was nothing but a hazy whisp on the horizon. Mito squinted to make out details that weren't there, until suddenly they _were_.

The port dwarfed that of Whale Island. The cargo ships were enormous. Their hulls were like castle walls, and the crews bustled goods on and off of them with a loud, controlled urgency. A crane lifted cargo off the boats and onto a yard, where unusual structures that reminded Mito of claw machines took over to move the containers onto trucks. It was so far removed from the barrels and pumps she was used to that it was truly incomparable. Unbelievable, like a child’s dream. 

The city itself stretched up and back into a valley as though it was on a gold pan being poured into the sea. The buildings were tall, taller than anything from home, and they were squashed together so tightly she couldn’t imagine what the streets must look like. Everything moved, from lines of laundry hung between porches to the winding streets packed with traffic. There were more people strolling along the boardwalk than she had seen in her life.

Mito flew off the boat the second she could, pack straps held tight. Running both because she feared if she stood still for too long she would crumple from overload and because the bus for the airport left before the next hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok heres dealio i wrote this fic largely the weekend before i started my first year at university (and my first year at a brick and mortar school since A Long Time) and mito's feelings were patterned on how *i* was feeling. which was. bad. and very scared. and like i wanted to give up before i even started which! as you can see is where this leaves off
> 
> i couldn't ever get this fic to *work* in drafts cause i didnt know what came AFTER this awful oh-god-no-the-world-is-changing-and-life-is-moving-under-my-feet panic but it is 8 months later and thumbs up i survived, bitches and babes
> 
> and what u probably care abt lol is that means i can actually write more
> 
> so consider this fic low priority but. not abandoned! its like an old acquaintance its gonna pop in and out and im just gonna invite it in when it does and have it sit down and talk
> 
> edit: oh yah also theres gonna be the jarring cut from past to present tense now sorry my dudes i settled on one to make life easier and it aint worth the trouble to keep this up


End file.
